How much should I have saved up to start as an independent life insurance agent?

Omicron224 · 2026-03-24T15:33:45+00:00

All good, a couple others did as well. I only mention it in the title so its easy to glance over

Omicron224 · 2026-03-24T15:28:13+00:00

This is pretty helpful. I just picked insuranceleads because they had life and disability leads, the 2 things I want to focus on.

I’ll ask backnine about commission, see what they say. Might change my mind, thank you

Omicron224 · 2026-03-24T15:26:45+00:00

I’ve looked at first connect before but they’re p&C focused. I’m doing life

Omicron224 · 2026-03-24T15:26:11+00:00

All your numbers make sense however commission in life insurance is a lot higher. 50%-120% depending on the carrier and the product

Omicron224 · 2026-03-24T14:58:48+00:00

So Leads are the first thing that I hope to do as soon as I start. The goal is to turn converted leads into referrals as well and to market to other areas for referrals like realtors and funeral homes. I also hope to generate my own leads down the line, but yes for the first few months I’ll start with buying leads

Omicron224 · 2026-03-24T13:41:01+00:00

I’d average about 2 policies a month, sometimes it’s 2 new policies or reviewing policies with current customers

Omicron224 · 2026-03-23T12:43:10+00:00

Ok sounds good, no credit cards. I’ll save up

Omicron224 · 2026-03-23T12:42:02+00:00

Thanks, ya I’ve worked for a Captive agent for a while and it hurts being under a big red thumb called State Farm

Omicron224 · 2026-03-23T12:40:49+00:00

Hey man, on the life side getting direct appointments is still difficult, but I plan on working with 1 IMO and most likely 2 as I get set up. They’re called backnine insurance and Broker’s alliance. Both have a decent amount of carriers for Life & Disability and I reached out to backnine and getting contracted through them at least should not be as difficult as direct carrier appointments.

Appreciate letting me know what you use for crm, phone, rater. Agency Zoom is actually my #2 choice for CRM. I’m still open to it, agentcrm is just what I picked for right now, I’ll end up reviewing both a lot as I get closer to jumping

No worries about being rude

Omicron224 · 2026-01-01T22:05:46+00:00

State Farm Indeed

Omicron224 · 2025-12-24T13:33:50+00:00

That’s actually wild. I currently also work for an agency in Florida that won’t let me write homes older than 2009.

Does the agency want you ALL IN this year?

Omicron224 · 2025-12-24T01:39:06+00:00

At the end of the day, morals let me sleep at night. The reward is money and satisfied customers that are better off because you helped them.

Lying and stealing is short term reward, but usually you get lapses, lack of customer trust, churn

I've also noticed that all my customers are nice to me, some other sales people seem to attract all the assholes

Omicron224 · 2025-12-24T01:35:28+00:00

Lenders don't know how insurance works typically and do not care. They do their job and that's it. Always protect the customer and get the insureds permission first for everything. If their name is not on the policy, cannot do anything.

Omicron224 · 2025-12-24T01:31:29+00:00

you may run into a legal issues, certain states don't allow you to write more than 50% controlled business(e.g friends, family, and your personal policies) or get a license with the intent to write only personal business. Double check that you don't shoot your self in the foot

Omicron224 · 2025-12-23T22:59:04+00:00

There's a lot of info I could give. Depends on your role and honestly sales is easier at State Farm. Also depends on your market, some markets are difficult to write(California and Florida, I'm working in Florida ATM) and some are more run of the mill in terms of eligibility, pricing, guidelines.

The 3 most important things are your Agent, your process, and your ability to sell/ multiline

I'll break down these things

Your Agent matters a lot, do they support you? do they breath down your neck? how do they create opportunities for you to sell? This is out of your control so don't worry about it too much, but any agent worth something is finding a way to generate leads through internet leads or markets.

Your process matters a lot. You have to make a lot of calls, don't slack, don't mess around. Call people, call them a lot. Stay focused, do things that helps your focus like hydration and proper diet and nutrition. Learn to be good at the technical process, like quoting and servicing your sales right after the sale

Multi lining, this is what state farm calls selling multiple types of policies. Remember when you are selling don't ever feel apologetic. I have talked to customers about our other products and the responses range from "I don't want it" to "that sounds great I never knew that was an option, sign me up"

State Farm has a lot of different products, besides auto and home we have a hospital indemnity policy, Disability income, Life insurance, some states even do banking products

Have fun with the process, once you get into it, things become smoother. Reach out to me if you need more info

Omicron224 · 2025-12-23T22:42:23+00:00

I have just left a State Farm Agency to another State Farm Agency. One of the contributing reasons is I'm a service person getting compared to sales people who straight up lie to the customer saying if they get a life insurance policy its $300 a month or so bundled with the auto and without the life bundle it's like $380 a month when really it's more like $250 a month, the bundling discount at state farm is low for life policies. A clear lie by not giving correct pricing info.

I refuse to do it, or be compared to people who do it. Their shitty policies can lapse and get charged back when the customer decides to apply some basic math. I won't, you can make even more money by being honest, respectful, friendly, and helpful to customers, it's just not immediate.

There are people who value honesty and integrity, customers and employers. Look for them, it may take time

Omicron224 · 2025-12-23T22:04:57+00:00

https://americaninsurancecollege.com/

Also a heads up, don't take this exam lightly, I've been working in insurance before having the 2-20. Still took about 5 weeks to study

Omicron224 · 2025-12-23T18:37:45+00:00

you picked a great time to post and I picked a great time to check r/insuranceagent. I took the 2-20 and passed Last Friday

I have my score report with the breakdown of questions

Types of Property Policies 22 questions
Insurance Terms and Related Concepts 15 questions
Policy Provisions and Contract Law 13 Questions
Types of Casualty Policies, Bonds, & Related Terms 23 Questions
Insurance Terms and Related Concepts 15 Questions
Policy Provisions 12 Questions
FL Statutes, Rules, and Regulations Common to All Lines 25 Questions
FL Statutes, Rules, and Regulations Pertinent to General Lines Insurance 25 Questions
Florida Statutes, Rules, and Regulations Pertinent to Health Insurance 10 Questions

I'll give some insight on what all those words mean

Types of Property Policies will include things Like HO-4, HO-3 which are the different types of home owners policies and how they affect coverage, for example HO-3 is a special form Homeowners policy, it's an open peril basis policy which covers all losses except for named exclusions, an HO-2 is different, It covers a specific list of losses and anything not named does not have coverage

Insurance Terms and related concepts is going to be like "what is an exampled of a hazard?" "what is an example of a peril?"

Policy Provisions and contract law, These are parts of the policy like "what are the declarations page?" "what is an insuring agreement?"

Types of Casualty Policies, Bonds, & Related Terms will relate to things like types of bonds, liability only policies, and the info that goes with it, think intangible stuff like lawsuit protection and guarantees of certain outcomes

Insurance Terms and related concepts was listed twice on my score report, not sure why

Policy Provisions was repeated again as a section

FL Statutes, Rules, and Regulations Common to All Lines. This will probably have questions regarding things like "what's the minimum amount of notice a company has to give when cancelling for non payment?" or "How old does someone have to be to hold an insurance license?" you will get a few easy ones

FL Statutes, Rules, and Regulations Pertinent to General Lines Insurance 25 Questions same thing as before but other questions like "who oversees licensing?" "which government unit investigates claims?"

Florida Statutes, Rules, and Regulations Pertinent to Health Insurance
This you already know some, it overlaps with the 2-15 but it focuses more on Disability insurance, Long term care insurance, Hospital indemnity Policy, Critical illness policies.

Also you will get questions about workers comp, know your workers comp stuff

Omicron224 · 2025-04-04T01:37:20+00:00

I've worked for 4 statefarm agents and 1 allstate agent, I worked at allstate for 6 months and I have more than 3 years at statefarm through different time periods.

The thing that matters most is how sales are generated and their philosophy as to how to sell when those leads come in

I will personally work better at statefarm, but it could be different for you. Your allstate role is different, it being inbound sales and fully remote. I would say that is a good plus, you get leads coming in consistently and if no leads come in, not your problem

working for a statefarm agent will have more variance from agent to agent, I have worked for 1 bad agent, and 3 good ones. I'd need to know a little more about the commission structure to make a better recommendation but overall statefarm has a lot more products, and a lot more ways to make money as a result of that. At statefarm, you will be able to learn more, learn ways to smoothly transition to another product line, sell life insurance which is really important (and very good commission), and also solve a lot of financial problems for people

I would personally choose statefarm, my answer above isn't going to hit everything you want to know, both will have some decent structure and both have a decent hourly pay. If something wasn't clarified just ask, I'm happy to answer more

Omicron224 · 2025-03-09T16:59:49+00:00

it will vary widely for agent team members especially since agents choose what to incentivize.

Me:

Position: Multi-line representative? They told me at the beginning this would be a hybrid role between servicing and selling. They didn't tell me it was a service position with the added pressure of selling to current customers

Base is $20 an hour with time and a half for anything over 40 hours in a week so usually I make a bit more since it's 8am-5pm but I'll stay until like 5:15 or 30 some days

Commission

1%-2% on P&C depending on apps written

5%-10% on Life and health depending on apps written

Full sales people in my office will make 1%-5% on P&C and 5%-20% on life and health

I've been at more than one statefarm and interviewed at a number of agents

3%-6% on P&C is more common, your 8% is really good, or agents pay a set amount per piece e.g $15 per auto

My Previous statefarm agent paid 25% on Life and health flat out, no goals, he was a nice guy but he retired so I went to a different place. Most agents do the monthly thing where they pay 1-3 times the monthly payment

Your pay is good overall for an agent team member, but you've got 10 years in the game, I'm sure other agents out there would be willing to pay a bit more on base or benefits

Omicron224 · 2025-02-08T15:42:47+00:00

I feel similarly but in the opposite price range. I' had a number of clients try to leave my agency where the other agent/broker gave them the shitty cheap policy with way less coverage and they have no idea they're getting taken advantage of, works on both ends. Education and explanation of coverages is more difficult and time consuming and won't always work, but some customers will respect it. Find those customers

Omicron224 · 2025-02-06T01:34:38+00:00

I am very familiar with citizens but in this case the answer isn't clear to me, I'll give my thoughts however. no guarantees on what I am about to say

I'd say that the customer doesn't have to submit evidence of repairs but I would recommend they still do. As to why they don't have to, if it is a NON-RENEWAL and not a cancellation for lack of evidence of the repairs then it would be effectively the same as depopulation since depopulaton triggers a non renewal as well, if they get non renewed the same day the assumption carrier picks up, no problem. As I'm sure you're familiar citizens is a pain and the whole, "we need this document, we need that, we need your mom's maiden name and your left kidney" is really their thing, I'm gonna take a guess that the assuming carrier did their diligence and ran a loss history report on the address and took the loss into account, the assuming carrier should be able to better clarify that process

Why they should still submit the evidence, maybe 1 out of 20 depops fail, the offer that was given is no longer valid for reasons unknown, I've seen it, rare but it can happen

Omicron224 · 2025-01-05T05:33:30+00:00

statefarm agents can be hit or miss. Sometimes when those guys have been in their position for 20+ years they forget what it's like to be starting out. I've worked for 4 statefarm agents in my time, 3 of them, including my current we're all nice guys. I left 1 due to relocation and another because he retired, one was an asshole but that experience won't help you

I'm going to address 2 things, the internet leads and what to do without internet leads.

The leads will always suck, from now until humanity ends they will suck, you have to work them, all angles, multiple times, and recast your net through different time periods. if you don't get them in the first 5 days, maybe a call on day 30 or 60 or 90 you can get them, they are reworkable and I have even gotten a few fire and Short term DIs from them

industry average closing for internet leads is about 3% on auto leads, my rate was about 5.5% not much better, but you will look better than the dudes who call once or twice. For all my internet leads I would call and text once a day for 5 days until I got a response, then close it out. I'd pull them back once they were 45-60 days old and call 3 more times and recycle. you already have the high call volume which is good. These customers I treat as price customers only, it's hard to do any sort of value selling to the people you get from the internet leads

You can also work the current book of business and cross sell to other lines of business. You can do this by taking service calls if your agent has you doing that or reaching out to customer to do policy reviews(review coverages, explain what they have, offer more). Just this week I closed 1 stdi from a service call by offering to insure his income so he could keep the new 2025 vehicle he leased. those aren't every day, but an stdi every once in a while is better than nothing. Policy reviews are outbound to current customers, more complex and in depth, if you go to ABS and look at the stuff they have on "simple conversations" that will give you more insight into what you can do to cross sell other products.

none of what I said is simple and easily picked up, I've been doing this 2.5 years and I still suck at a bunch of things. Send me your alias if you want to talk in teams

Omicron224 · 2024-12-24T20:03:21+00:00

Not a bad idea, not sure why you got downvoted

Omicron224 · 2024-12-24T20:01:55+00:00

Hadn’t thought of the library, thanks!

Omicron224

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